To the accidental and isolated places of storage in the former succeeded a series of symmetrical constructions, built independently of each other, yet rapidly succeeding one another, and apparently all by funds proceeding from pious legacies and donations in the fourteenth century. These different galleries enclosed from twenty to twenty-five arcades each, and were largely open to the air, so that their ghastly contents were plainly visible. Some of them, it is thought, had no roofs, or very imperfect ones. Notwithstanding these charnel-houses and the reeking soil of the cemetery itself, a deposit for refuse and offal of every description, this locality was one of the most thronged in the mediæval city. The present Halles Centrales and the Marché des Innocents, which occupied the same site from 1785, are but the legitimate successors of the busy commerce carried on in this locality from the earliest times. Louis XI authorized the construction, in the Rue de la Ferronnerie, against the walls of the charniers, of little stalls or sheds to be let to poor trades-people on condition that they did not display their merchandise on the public street, very narrow in this quarter,--a restriction which was speedily disregarded. "An ordinance of Henri II, on highways, directed that this street should be widened, May 14, 1554; it was not executed, and, fifty-six years later, to the day, Henri IV was assassinated here, May 14, 1610." It may be remembered that the temporary obstruction of the narrow street, which compelled the royal coach to halt, gave Ravaillac his opportunity. In 1669, the charnier des Lingères was ordered to be demolished, and two years later it was reconstructed to form the northern wall of the Rue de la Ferronnerie.